As leaves change from green to brown and skies cross from blue to gray, the Halloween season has also been characterized by crossings of a different kind: Many places in Spokane are said to be haunted.
Halloween origins date back to the ancient Celts. Two thousand years ago, the Celts celebrated the new year on Nov. 1. They believed that on the last night of the year (Oct. 31) when summer ends and winter starts, the line between the realms of the living and the dead blurs. On that night the Celts, led by the Druid priests, celebrated Samhain (sow-in), a festival where Druids made sacred bonfires used to burn animal and food sacrifices and Celts dressed up in animal costumes and tried to predict each other’s fortunes.
Samhain eventually morphed into All Saints Day when Pope Gregory III moved Pope Boniface IV’s All Martyrs Day to Nov. 1 and renamed it. As Christian influence slowly blended with old Celtic rites, Samhain began to be called All-Hallows Eve, and eventually Halloween.
Remnants of Samhain still remain today. Halloween is known for ghost stories, horror films and haunted houses, and Spokane is host to its fair share of supposedly haunted places. Here are a few of the most haunted spots in Spokane:
Monaghan Mansion:
While many students have heard the spooky stories surrounding the music mansion on GU’s campus, the facts of mansion’s history are still unclear.
Over the years there have been reports of organ music and disembodied flute music, growling sounds coming from one of the basement rooms, a door opening on its own with no one in the room, unexplainable odors and temperature changes, disembodied footsteps and force-field-like sensations experienced by those in the mansion. There were also multiple security guards, a housekeeper and a student who lived in the mansion at the time, who all reported experiencing supernatural things in the house.
In February 1974, Fr. Walter F. Leedale, S.J., an associate music professor, preformed a series of blessings inside the mansion to, clear the house of any paranormal forces. Initially, Ledale wasn’t convinced that anything unusual was happening in the mansion.
“I was totally skeptical about the whole issue, but I gradually began to investigate on my own, what I considered pure imagination or the power of suggestion," he said according to an article by Dan Morris in 1974.
Leedale wanted to clear the house of "Whatever was disturbing the place," so that, "no harm would befall all the people who go in and out," according to an article in the April 11, 1975 issue of the Bulletin.
The prayers and rites Leedale performed were thought to be like the ones found in the film “The Exorcist,” which had been released the previous the year, but the prayers he performed were different. Exorcisms require the permission of the local bishop, and the prayers performed by Leedale did not have this permission.
Greenwood Cemetery
Another location said to be haunted is Greenwood Cemetery, founded in 1888. Greenwood has been called the most haunted place in the state of Washington, according to Tim Cihal, who has been a funeral director and an embalmer there for 22 years. However, Cihal said he has never seen anything.
“The reason people tell me I don’t see anything is because I don’t believe,” he said.
According to Cihal, around 1895 a young woman who moved to Spokane from the East Coast. She was very beautiful, and her beauty won the attention of a man in the city. Infatuated, he began courting her, spending his money on new clothes, fancy dinners and other gifts to win her approval.
He eventually asked her to marry him, and she accepted, believing him to be generous, hard working and wealthy.
When she moved in with him, she found that he had no possessions, and had spent his entire fortune trying to win her over. She was so upset that she filed for an annulment. Her husband was mad at her for deciding to leave him.
“A couple weeks later, he tracks her down in downtown, and pulls out a revolver and shoots her; kills her dead,” Cihal said.
Cihal said downtown residents were so upset that this woman had been murdered that a team of vigilantes tracked down the man and murdered him.
The woman is buried in the unendowed section of Greenwood, which at the time was designed as a “potter’s field.” This means that people were buried one right after the other in rows and they couldn’t choose where they were to be buried, he said. By state law, this section cannot be maintained by the cemetery. It is the responsibility of the property owners or volunteers to maintain the graves, which typically are overgrown with foliage.
It is said that the woman is buried in her wedding dress and her husband is buried in the grave next to hers.
“And so, the story goes, that on cold, windy evenings, in her wedding dress she wanders the unendowed section looking for another grave,” Cihal said.
The second story told about Greenwood Cemetery centers on the Elks Lodge. The Elks, a nationally recognized fraternal organization founded in 1868, was a social club and also known as a good place to drink and party.
The Elks owned a mausoleum in the cemetery to hold their members’ cremated remains, right at the top of the 1,000 steps to the original entrance to Greenwood.
“The members used so much of their money partying that they basically went bankrupt,” Cihal said. The mausoleum was covered in bronze, and was very expensive.
“The organization decided they needed to pay off some of their debts, so they began to tear off some of the bronze on and around the mausoleum.”
The human remains were removed, but it is said that now the old Elks members wander the cemetery looking for the reason they were displaced from their resting place, he said. Legend says that the old Elks guard the stairs keeping anyone from coming to deface their resting place.
The Davenport Hotel
The 100-year-old Davenport Hotel in downtown Spokane is rumored to be host to its own ghosts. In August 1920, Ellen McNamara, her sister and her niece were in Spokane on vacation from New York.
According to Chet Caskey, who leads year-round ghost tours through Spokane, McNamara and her family were leaving their room for a fancy dinner. McNamara, dressed in a drop-waist dress, heels, pearls and a cloche hat, needed to go back to the room, Caskey said. Her family was waiting for her in the lobby when suddenly McNamara fell through the Tiffany glass ceiling, landed on the marble floor below and soon died. Caskey said her reported last words were, ‘Where do I turn?’
“Nobody knows how she fell and people today still hear her in the hotel asking ‘Where do I turn?’ ‘Where do I turn?’ ” Caskey said.
The hotel declined to comment.
According to Caskey, Browne’s Addition, the Glover Mansion and the South Hill are all home to spirits.
Ghost stories go way beyond what you’ll find in a history book, Caskey said. “These stories are the people’s history.”
*** Originally published in the Gonzaga Bulletin. Oct. 30, 2014***